ALLIANCE OF CHURCH AND STATE AND
ITS INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC MORALS AND RELIGION.

SOURCES.

The church laws of
the Christian emperors from Constantine to Justinian, collected in the CodexTheodosianus
of the year 438 (edited, with a learned commentary, by Jac. Gothofredus, Lyons,
1668, in six vols. fol.; afterwards by J. D. Ritter, Lips. 1736, in seven
vols.; and more recently, with newly discovered books and fragments, by G.
Haenel, Bonn, 1842), and in the CodexJustinianeus of 534 (in the
numerous editions of the Corpus juris civilis Romani). Also Eusebius: Vita Constant., and H. Eccl.
l. x. On the other hand, the lamentations of the church fathers, especially Gregory Naz., Chrysostom, and Augustine
(in their sermons), over the secularized Christianity of their time.

The previous chapter has shown us
how Christianity gradually supplanted the Graeco-Roman heathenism and became
the established religion in the empire of the Caesars. Since that time the
church and the state, though frequently jarring, have remained united in
Europe, either on the hierarchical basis, with the temporal power under the
tutelage of the spiritual, or on the caesaro-papal, with the spiritual power
merged in the temporal; while in the United States of America, since the end of
the eighteenth century, the two powers have stood peacefully but independently
side by side. The church could now act upon the state; but so could the state
act upon the church; and this mutual influence became a source of both profit
and loss, blessing and curse, on either side.

The martyrs and confessors of
the first three centuries, in their expectation of the impending end of the
world and their desire for the speedy return of the Lord, had never once
thought of such a thing as the great and sudden change, which meets us at the
beginning of this period in the relation of the Roman state to the Christian
church. Tertullian had even held the Christian profession to be irreconcilable
with the office of a Roman emperor.129 Nevertheless,
clergy and people very soon and very easily accommodated themselves to the new
order of things, and recognized in it a reproduction of the theocratic
constitution of the people of God under the ancient covenant. Save that the
dissenting sects, who derived no benefit from this union, but were rather
subject to persecution from the state and from the established Catholicism, the
Donatists for an especial instance, protested against the intermeddling of the
temporal power with religious concerns.130 The heathen,
who now came over in a mass, had all along been accustomed to a union of
politics with religion, of the imperial with the sacerdotal dignity. They could
not imagine a state without some cultus, whatever might be its name. And as
heathenism had outlived itself in the empire, and Judaism with its national
exclusiveness and its stationary character was totally disqualified,
Christianity must take the throne.

The change was as natural and
inevitable as it was great. When Constantine planted the standard of the cross
upon the forsaken temples of the gods, he but followed the irresistible current
of history itself. Christianity had already, without a stroke of sword or of
intrigue, achieved over the false religion the internal victory of spirit over
matter, of truth over falsehood, of faith over superstition, of the worship of God
over idolatry, of morality over corruption. Under a three hundred years'
oppression, it had preserved its irrepressible moral vigor, and abundantly
earned its new social position. It could not possibly continue a despised sect,
a homeless child of the wilderness, but, like its divine founder on the third
day after his crucifixion, it must rise again, take the reins of the world into
its hands, and, as an all-transforming principle, take state, science, and art
to itself, to breathe into them a higher life and consecrate them to the
service of God. The church, of course, continues to the end a servant, as
Christ himself came not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and she must at
all times suffer persecution, outwardly or inwardly, from the ungodly world.
Yet is she also the bride of the Son of God, therefore of royal blood; and she
is to make her purifying and sanctifying influence felt upon all orders of
natural life and all forms of human society. And from this influence the state,
of course, is not excepted. Union with the state is no more necessarily a
profanation of holy things than union with science and art, which, in fact,
themselves proceed from God, and must subserve his glory.

On the other hand, the state, as
a necessary and divine institution for the protection of person and property,
for the administration of law and justice, and for the promotion of earthly
weal, could not possibly persist forever in her hostility to Christianity, but
must at least allow it a legal existence and free play; and if she would attain
a higher development and better answer her moral ends than she could in union
with idolatry, she must surrender herself to its influence. The kingdom of the
Father, to which the state belongs, is not essentially incompatible with the
church, the kingdom of the Son; rather does "the Father draw to the
Son," and the Son leads back to the Father, till God become "all in
all." Henceforth should kings
again be nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers to the church,131 and the prophecy begin to be
fulfilled: "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord
and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever."132

The American reparation of
church and state, even if regarded as the best settlement of the true relation
of the two, is not in the least inconsistent with this view. It is not a return
to the pre-Constantinian basis, with its spirit of persecution, but rests upon
the mutual reverential recognition and support of the two powers, and must be
regarded as the continued result of that mighty revolution of the fourth
century.

But the elevation of
Christianity as the religion of the state presents also an opposite aspect to
our contemplation. It involved great risk of degeneracy to the church. The
Roman state, with its laws, institutions, and usages, was still deeply rooted
in heathenism, and could not be transformed by a magical stroke. The
christianizing of the state amounted therefore in great measure to a paganizing
and secularizing of the church. The world overcame the church, as much as the
church overcame the world, and the temporal gain of Christianity was in many
respects cancelled by spiritual loss. The mass of the Roman empire was baptized
only with water, not with the Spirit and fire of the gospel, and it smuggled
heathen manners and practices into the sanctuary under a new name. The very
combination of the cross with the military ensign by Constantine was a most
doubtful omen, portending an unhappy mixture of the temporal and the spiritual
powers, the kingdom which is of the earth, and that which is from heaven. The
settlement of the boundary between the two powers, which, with all their unity,
remain as essentially distinct as body and soul, law and gospel, was itself a
prolific source of errors and vehement strifes about jurisdiction, which
stretch through all the middle age, and still repeat themselves in these latest
times, save where the amicable American separation has thus far forestalled
collision.

Amidst all the bad consequences
of the union of church and state, however, we must not forget that the deeper
spirit of the gospel has ever reacted against the evils and abuses of it,
whether under an imperial pope or a papal emperor, and has preserved its divine
power for the salvation of men under every form of constitution. Though
standing and working in the world, and in many ways linked with it, yet is
Christianity not of the world, but stands above it.

Nor must we think the degeneracy
of the church began with her union with the state.133 Corruption and apostasy cannot
attach to any one fact or personage, be he Constantine or Gregory I. or Gregory
VII. They are rooted in the natural heart of man. They revealed themselves, at
least in the germ, even in the apostolic age, and are by no means avoided, as
the condition of America proves, by the separation of the two powers. We have
among ourselves almost all the errors and abuses of the old world, not
collected indeed in any one communion, but distributed among our various
denominations and sects. The history of the church presents from the beginning
a twofold development of good and of evil, an incessant antagonism of light and
darkness, truth and falsehood, the mystery of godliness and the mystery of
iniquity, Christianity and Antichrist. According to the Lord's parables of the
net and of the tares among the wheat, we cannot expect a complete separation
before the final judgment, though in a relative sense the history of the church
is a progressive judgment of the church, as the history of the world is a
judgment of the world.

§ 14. Rights and Privileges of the Church. Secular Advantages.

The conversion of Constantine
and the gradual establishment of Christianity as the religion of the state had
first of all the important effect of giving the church not only the usual
rights of a legal corporation, which she possesses also in America, and here
without distinction of confessions, but at the same time the peculiar
privileges, which the heathen worship and priesthood had heretofore enjoyed.
These rights and privileges she gradually secured either by tacit concession or
through special laws of the Christian emperors as laid down in the collections
of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes.134 These were
limited, however, as we must here at the outset observe, exclusively to the
catholic or orthodox church.135 The heretical
and schismatic sects without distinction, excepting the Arians during their
brief ascendency under Arian emperors, were now worse off than they had been
before, and were forbidden the free exercise of their worship even under
Constantine upon pain of fines and confiscation, and from the time of
Theodosius and Justinian upon pain of death. Equal patronage of all Christian
parties was totally foreign to the despotic uniformity system of the Byzantine
emperors and the ecclesiastical exclusiveness and absolutism of the popes. Nor
can it be at all consistently carried out upon the state-church basis; for
every concession to dissenters loosens the bond between the church and the
state.

The immunities and privileges,
which were conferred upon the catholic church in the Roman empire from the time
of Constantine by imperial legislation, may be specified as follows:

1. The exemption of the clergy
from most public burdens.

Among these were obligatory
public services,136 such as military duty, low manual labor, the bearing of
costly dignities, and in a measure taxes for the real estate of the church. The
exemption,137 which had been enjoyed, indeed, not by the heathen
priests alone, but at least partially by physicians also and rhetoricians, and
the Jewish rulers of synagogues, was first granted by Constantine in the year
313 to the catholic clergy in Africa, and afterwards, in 319, extended
throughout the empire. But this led many to press into the clerical office
without inward call, to the prejudice of the state; and in 320 the emperor made
a law prohibiting the wealthy138 from entering the ministry, and
limiting the increase of the clergy, on the singular ground, that "the
rich should bear the burdens of the world, the poor be supported by the
property of the church."
Valentinian I. issued a similar law in 364. Under Valentinian II. and
Theodosius I. the rich were admitted to the spiritual office on condition of
assigning their property to others, who should fulfill the demands of the state
in their stead. But these arbitrary laws were certainly not strictly observed.

Constantine also exempted the
church from the land tax, but afterwards revoked this immunity; and his
successors likewise were not uniform in this matter. Ambrose, though one of the
strongest advocates of the rights of the church, accedes to the fact and the
justice of the assessment of church lands;139 but the hierarchy afterwards
claimed for the church a divine right of exemption from all taxation.

2. The enrichment and endowment
of the church.

Here again Constantine led the
way. He not only restored (in 313) the buildings and estates, which had been
confiscated in the Diocletian persecution, but granted the church also the
right to receive legacies (321), and himself made liberal contributions in
money and grain to the support of the clergy and the building of churches in
Africa,140 in the Holy Land, in Nicomedia, Antioch, and
Constantinople. Though this, be it remembered, can be no great merit in an
absolute monarch, who is lord of the public treasury as he is of his private
purse, and can afford to be generous at the expense of his subjects. He and his
successors likewise gave to the church the heathen temples and their estates
and the public property of heretics; but these more frequently were confiscated
to the civil treasury or squandered on favorites. Wealthy subjects, some from
pure piety, others from motives of interest, conveyed their property to the
church, often to the prejudice of the just claims of their kindred. Bishops and
monks not rarely used unworthy influences with widows and dying persons; though
Augustine positively rejected every legacy, which deprived a son of his rights.
Valentinian I. found it necessary to oppose the legacy-hunting of the clergy,
particularly in Rome, with a law of the year 370,141 and Jerome acknowledges there
was good reason for it.142 The wealth of
the church was converted mostly into real estate, or at least secured by it.
And the church soon came to own the tenth part of all the landed property. This
land, to be sure, had long been worthless or neglected, but under favorable
conditions rose in value with uncommon rapidity. At the time of Chrysostom,
towards the close of the fourth century, the church of Antioch was strong
enough to maintain entirely or in part three thousand widows and consecrated
virgins besides many poor, sick, and strangers.143 The metropolitan churches of Rome and Alexandria were the most
wealthy. The various churches of Rome in the sixth century, besides enormous
treasures in money and gold and silver vases, owned many houses and lands not
only in Italy and Sicily, but even in Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt.144 And when John, who bears the honorable distinction of the
Almsgiver for his unlimited liberality to the poor, became patriarch of
Alexandria (606), he found in the church treasury eight thousand pounds of
gold, and himself received ten thousand, though be retained hardly an ordinary
blanket for himself, and is said on one occasion to have fed seven thousand
five hundred poor at once.145

The control of the
ecclesiastical revenues vested in the bishops. The bishops distributed the
funds according, to the prevailing custom into three or four parts: for
themselves, for their clergy, for the current expenses of worship, and for the
poor. They frequently exposed themselves to the suspicion of avarice and
nepotism. The best of them, like Chrysostom and Augustine, were averse to this
concernment with earthly property, since it often conflicted with their higher
duties; and they preferred the poverty of earlier times, because the present
abundant revenues diminished private beneficence.

And most certainly this opulence
had two sides. It was a source both of profit and of loss to the church.
According to the spirit of its proprietors and its controllers, it might be
used for the furtherance of the kingdom of God, the building of churches, the
support of the needy, and the founding of charitable institutions for the poor,
the sick, for widows and orphans, for destitute strangers and aged persons,146 or perverted to the fostering
of indolence and luxury, and thus promote moral corruption and decay. This was
felt by serious minds even in the palmy days of the external power of the
hierarchy. Dante, believing Constantine to be the author of the pope's temporal
sovereignty, on the ground of the fictitious donation to Sylvester, bitterly
exclaimed:

3. The better support of the
clergy was another advantage connected with the new position of Christianity in
the empire.

Hitherto the clergy had been
entirely dependent on the voluntary contributions of the Christians, and the
Christians were for the most part poor. Now they received a fixed income from
the church funds and from imperial and municipal treasuries. To this was added
the contribution of first-fruits and tithes, which, though not as yet legally
enforced, arose as a voluntary custom at a very early period, and probably in
churches of Jewish origin existed from the first, after the example of the
Jewish law.148 Where these
means of support were not sufficient, the clergy turned to agriculture or some
other occupation; and so late as the fifth century many synods recommended this
means of subsistence, although the Apostolical Canons prohibited the engagement
of the clergy in secular callings under penalty of deposition.149

This improvement, also, in the
external condition of the clergy was often attended with a proportional
degeneracy in their moral character. It raised them above oppressive and
distracting cares for livelihood, made them independent, and permitted them to
devote their whole strength to the duties of their office; but it also favored
ease and luxury, allured a host of unworthy persons into the service of the
church, and checked the exercise of free giving among the people. The better
bishops, like Athanasius, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysosotom, Theodoret,
Ambrose, Augustine, lived in ascetic simplicity, and used their revenues for
the public good; while others indulged their vanity, their love of
magnificence, and their voluptuousness. The heathen historian Ammianus gives
the country clergy in general the credit of simplicity, temperance, and virtue,
while he represents the Roman hierarchy, greatly enriched by the gifts of
matrons, as extreme in the luxury of their dress and their more than royal
banquets;150 and St. Jerome agrees with him.151 The distinguished heathen prefect, Praetextatus, said to Pope
Damasus, that for the price of the bishopric of Rome he himself might become a
Christian at once. The bishops of Constantinople, according to the account of
Gregory Nazianzen,152 who himself held that see for a short time, were not
behind their Roman colleagues in this extravagance, and vied with the most
honorable functionaries of the state in pomp and sumptuous diet. The cathedrals
of Constantinople and Carthage had hundreds of priests, deacons, deaconesses,
subdeacons, prelectors, singers, and janitors.153

It is worthy of notice, that, as
we have already intimated, the two greatest church fathers gave the preference
in principle to the voluntary system in the support of the church and the
ministry, which prevailed before the Nicene era, and which has been restored in
modern times in the United States of America. Chrysostom no doubt perceived
that under existing circumstances the wants of the church could not well be
otherwise supplied, but he was decidedly averse to the accumulation of treasure
by the church, and said to his hearers in Antioch: "The treasure of the
church should be with you all, and it is only your hardness of heart that
requires her to hold earthly property and to deal in houses and lands. Ye are unfruitful
in good works, and so the ministers of God must meddle in a thousand matters
foreign to their office. In the days of the apostles people might likewise have
given them houses and lands; why did they prefer to sell the houses and lands
and give the proceeds? Because this was
without doubt the better way. Your fathers would have preferred that you should
give alms of your incomes, but they feared that your avarice might leave the
poor to hunger; hence the present order of things."154 Augustine desired that his people in Hippo should take back the
church property and support the clergy and the poor by free gifts.155

§ 16. Episcopal Jurisdiction and Intercession.

4. We proceed to the legal
validity, of the episcopal jurisdiction, which likewise dates from the time of
Constantine.

After the manner of the Jewish
synagogues, and according to the exhortation of St. Paul,156 the Christians were accustomed
from the beginning to settle their controversies before the church, rather than
carry them before heathen tribunals; but down to the time of Constantine the
validity, of the bishop's decision depended on the voluntary, submission of
both parties. Now this decision was invested with the force of law, and in
spiritual matters no appeal could be taken from it to the civil court.
Constantine himself, so early as 314, rejected such an appeal in the Donatist
controversy with the significant declaration: "The judgment of the priests
must be regarded as the judgment of Christ himself."157 Even a sentence of excommunication
was final; and Justinian allowed appeal only to the metropolitan, not to the
civil tribunal. Several councils, that of Chalcedon, for example, in 451, went
so far as to threaten clergy, who should avoid the episcopal tribunal or appeal
from it to the civil, with deposition. Sometimes the bishops called in the help
of the state, where the offender contemned the censure of the church. Justinian
I. extended the episcopal jurisdiction also to the monasteries. Heraclius
subsequently (628) referred even criminal causes among the clergy to the
bishops, thus dismissing the clergy thenceforth entirely from the secular
courts; though of course holding them liable for the physical penalty, when
convicted of capital crime,158 as the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction ended with deposition and excommunication. Another privilege,
granted by Theodosius to the clergy, was, that they should not be compelled by
torture to bear testimony before the civil tribunal.

This elevation of the power and
influence of the bishops was a salutary check upon the jurisdiction of the
state, and on the whole conduced to the interests of justice and humanity;
though it also nourished hierarchical arrogance and entangled the bishops, to
the prejudice of their higher functions, in all manner of secular suits, in
which they were frequently called into consultation. Chrysostom complains that
"the arbitrator undergoes incalculable vexations, much labor, and more
difficulties than the public judge. It is hard to discover the right, but
harder not to violate it when discovered. Not labor and difficulty alone are
connected with office, but also no little danger."159 Augustine, too, who could make better use of his time, felt this
part of his official duty a burden, which nevertheless he bore for love to the
church.160 Others handed
over these matters to a subordinate ecclesiastic, or even, like Silvanus,
bishop of Troas, to a layman.161

5. Another advantage resulting
from the alliance of the church with the empire was the episcopal right of
intercession.

The privilege of interceding
with the secular power for criminals, prisoners, and unfortunates of every kind
had belonged to the heathen priests, and especially to the vestals, and now
passed to the Christian ministry, above all to the bishops, and thenceforth
became an essential function of their office. A church in Gaul about the year
460 opposed the ordination of a monk to the bishopric, because, being
unaccustomed to intercourse with secular magistrates, though he might intercede
with the Heavenly Judge for their souls, he could not with the earthly for
their bodies. The bishops were regarded particularly as the guardians of widows
and orphans, and the control of their property was intrusted to them. Justinian
in 529 assigned to them also a supervision of the prisons, which they were to
visit on Wednesdays and Fridays, the days of Christ's passion.

The exercise of this right of
intercession, one may well suppose, often obstructed the course of justice; but
it also, in innumerable cases, especially in times of cruel, arbitrary
despotism, protected the interests of innocence, humanity, and mercy. Sometimes,
by the powerful pleadings of bishops with governors and emperors, whole
provinces were rescued from oppressive taxation and from the revenge of
conquerors. Thus Flavian of Antioch in 387 averted the wrath of Theodosius on
occasion of a rebellion, journeying under the double burden of age and sickness
even to Constantinople to the emperor himself, and with complete success, as an
ambassador of their common Lord, reminding him of the words: "If ye
forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."162

6. With the right of
intercession was closely connected the right of asylum in churches.

In former times many of the
heathen temples and altars, with some exceptions, were held inviolable as
places of refuge; and the Christian churches now inherited also this
prerogative. The usage, with some precautions against abuse, was made law by
Theodosius II. in 431, and the ill treatment of an unarmed fugitive in any part
of the church edifice, or even upon the consecrated ground, was threatened with
the penalty of death.163

Thus slaves found sure refuge
from the rage of their masters, debtors from the persecution of inexorable
creditors, women and virgins from the approaches of profligates, the conquered
from the sword of their enemies, in the holy places, until the bishop by his
powerful mediation could procure justice or mercy. The beneficence of this law,
which had its root not in superstition alone, but in the nobler sympathies of
the people, comes most impressively to view amidst the ragings of the great
migration and of the frequent intestine wars.164

§ 17. Legal Sanction of Sunday.

7. The civil sanction of the
observance of Sunday and other festivals of the church.

The state, indeed, should not
and cannot enforce this observance upon any one, but may undoubtedly and should
prohibit the public disturbance and profanation of the Christian Sabbath, and
protect the Christians in their right and duty of its proper observance.
Constantine in 321 forbade the sitting of courts and all secular labor in towns
on "the venerable day of the sun," as he expresses himself, perhaps
with reference at once to the sun-god, Apollo, and to Christ, the true Sun of
righteousness; to his pagan and his Christian subjects. But he distinctly
permitted the culture of farms and vineyards in the country, because frequently
this could be attended to on no other day so well;165 though one would suppose that
the hard-working peasantry were the very ones who most needed the day of rest.
Soon afterward, in June, 321, he allowed the manumission of slaves on Sunday;166 as this, being an act of benevolence,
was different from ordinary business, and might be altogether appropriate to
the day of resurrection and redemption. According to Eusebius, Constantine also
prohibited all military exercises on Sunday, and at the same time enjoined the
observance of Friday in memory of the death of Christ.167

Nay, he went so far, in
well-meaning but mistaken zeal, as to require of his soldiers, even the pagan
ones, the positive observance of Sunday, by pronouncing at a signal the
following prayer, which they mechanically learned: "Thee alone we
acknowledge as God; thee we confess as king; to thee we call as our helper;
from thee we have received victories; through thee we have conquered enemies.
Thee we thank for good received; from thee we hope for good to come. Thee we
all most humbly beseech to keep our Constantine and his God-fearing sons
through long life healthy and victorious."168 Though this formula was held in a deistical generalness, yet the
legal injunction of it lay clearly beyond the province of the civil power,
trespassed on the rights of conscience, and unavoidably encouraged hypocrisy
and empty formalism.

Later emperors declared the
profanation of Sunday to be sacrilege, and prohibited also the collecting of
taxes and private debts (368 and 386), and even theatrical and circus
performances, on Sunday and the high festivals (386 and 425).169 But this interdiction of public amusements, on which a council of
Carthage (399 or 401) with reason insisted, was probably never rigidly enforced,
and was repeatedly supplanted by the opposite practice, which gradually
prevailed all over Europe.170

Comp. on this
subject particularly the works cited at § 13, sub ii, by Rhoer, Meysenburg, and Troplong;
also Gibbon, chap. xliv (an
admirable summary of the Roman law), Milman:
Lat. Christianity, vol. I. B. iii. chap. 5, and in part the works of Schmidt and Chastel on the influence of Christianity upon society in the
Roman empire, quoted in vol. i. § 86.

While in this way the state
secured to the church the well-deserved rights of a legal corporation, the
church exerted in turn a most beneficent influence on the state, liberating it
by degrees from the power of heathen laws and customs, from the spirit of
egotism, revenge, and retaliation, and extending its care beyond mere material
prosperity to the higher moral interests of society. In the previous period we
observed the contrast between Christian morality and heathen corruption in the
Roman empire.171 We are now to
see how the principles of Christian morality gained public recognition, and began
at least in some degree to rule the civil and political life.

As early as the second century,
under the better heathen emperors, and evidently under the indirect,
struggling, yet irresistible influence of the Christian spirit, legislation
took a reformatory, humane turn, which was carried by the Christian emperors as
far as it could be carried on the basis of the ancient Graeco-Roman
civilization. Now, above all, the principle of justice and equity, humanity and
love, began to assert itself in the state. For Christianity, with its doctrines
of man's likeness to God, of the infinite value of personality, of the original
unity of the human race, and of the common redemption through Christ, first
brought the universal rights of man to bear in opposition to the exclusive
national spirit, the heartless selfishness, and the political absolutism of the
old world, which harshly separated nations and classes, and respected man only
as a citizen, while at the same time it denied the right of citizenship to the
great mass of slaves, foreigners, and barbarians.172

Christ himself began his
reformation with the lowest orders of the people, with fishermen and
taxgatherers, with the poor, the lame, the blind, with demoniacs and sufferers
of every kind, and raised them first to the sense of their dignity and their
high destiny. So now the church wrought in the state and through the state for
the elevation of the oppressed and the needy, and of those classes which under
the reign of heathenism were not reckoned at all in the body politic, but were
heartlessly trodden under foot. The reformatory motion was thwarted, it is
true, to a considerable extent, by popular custom, which is stronger than law,
and by the structure of society in the Roman empire, which was still
essentially heathen and doomed to dissolution. But reform was at last set in
motion, and could not be turned back even by the overthrow of the empire; it
propagated itself among the German tribes. And although even in Christian
states the old social maladies are ever breaking forth from corrupt human
nature, sometimes with the violence of revolution, Christianity is ever coming
in to restrain, to purify, to heal, and to console, curbing the wild passions
of tyrants and of populace, vindicating the persecuted, mitigating the horrors
of war, and repressing incalculable vice in public and in private life among
Christian people. The most cursory comparison of Christendom with the most
civilized heathen and Mohammedan countries affords ample testimony of this.

Here again the reign of
Constantine is a turning point. Though an oriental despot, and but imperfectly
possessed with the earnestness of Christian morality, he nevertheless enacted
many laws, which distinctly breathe the spirit of Christian justice and
humanity: the abolition of the punishment of crucifixion, the prohibition of
gladiatorial games and cruel rites, the discouragement of infanticide, and the
encouragement of the emancipation of slaves. Eusebius says he improved most of
the old laws or replaced them by new ones.173 Henceforward we feel beneath
the toga of the Roman lawgiver the warmth of a Christian heart. We perceive the
influence of the evangelical preaching and exhortations of the father of
monasticism out of the Egyptian desert to the rulers of the world, Constantine
and his sons: that they should show justice and mercy to the poor, and remember
the judgment to come.

Even Julian, with all his hatred
of the Christians, could not entirely renounce the influence of his education
and of the reigning spirit of the age, but had to borrow from the church many
of his measures for the reformation of heathenism. He recognized especially the
duty of benevolence toward all men, charity to the poor, and clemency to
prisoners; though this was contrary to the heathen sentiment, and though he
proved himself anything but benevolent toward the Christians. But then the
total failure of his philanthropic plans and measures shows that the true love
for man can thrive only in Christian soil. And it is remarkable, that, with all
this involuntary concession to Christianity, Julian himself passed not a single
law in line with the progress of natural rights and equity.174

His successors trod in the
footsteps of Constantine, and to the end of the West Roman empire kept the
civil legislation under the influence of the Christian spirit, though thus
often occasioning conflicts with the still lingering heathen element, and
sometimes temporary apostasy and reaction. We observe also, in remarkable
contradiction, that while the laws were milder in some respects, they were in
others even more severe and bloody than ever before: a paradox to be explained
no doubt in part by the despotic character of the Byzantine government, and in
part by the disorders of the time.175

It now became necessary to
collect the imperial ordinances176 in a codex or corpus juris. Of the first two attempts of
this kind, made in the middle of the fourth century, only some fragments
remain.177 But we have the
Codex Theodosianus, which Theodosius II. caused to be made by several
jurists between the years 429 and 438. It contains the laws of the Christian
emperors from Constantine down, adulterated with many heathen elements; and it
was sanctioned by Valentinian III. for the western empire. A hundred years
later, in the flourishing period of the Byzantine state-church despotism,
Justinian I., who, by the way, cannot be acquitted of the reproach of
capricious and fickle law-making, committed to a number of lawyers, under the
direction of the renowned Tribonianus,178 the great task of making a
complete revised and digested collection of the Roman law from the time of
Hadrian to his own reign; and thus arose, in the short period of seven years
(527-534), through the combination of the best talent and the best facilities,
the celebrated CodexJustinianeus, which thenceforth became the
universal law of the Roman empire, the sole text book in the academies at Rome,
Constantinople, and Berytus, and the basis of the legal relations of the
greater part of Christian Europe to this day.179

This body of Roman law180 is an important source of our
knowledge of the Christian life in its relations to the state and its influence
upon it. It is, to be sure, in great part the legacy of pagan Rome, which was
constitutionally endowed with legislative and administrative genius, and
thereby as it were predestined to universal empire. But it received essential
modification through the orientalizing change in the character of the empire
from the time of Constantine, through the infusion of various Germanic
elements, through the influence of the law of Moses, and, in its best points,
through the spirit of Christianity. The church it fully recognizes as a
legitimate institution and of divine authority, and several of its laws were
enacted at the direct instance of bishops. So the "Common Law," the
unwritten traditional law of England and America, though descending from the Anglo-Saxon
times, therefore from heathen Germandom, has ripened under the influence of
Christianity and the church, and betrays this influence even far more plainly
than the Roman code, especially in all that regards the individual and personal
rights and liberties of man.

§ 19. Elevation of Woman and the Family.

The benign effect of
Christianity on legislation in the Graeco-Roman empire is especially noticeable
in the following points:

1. In the treatment of women.
From the beginning, Christianity labored, primarily in the silent way of fact,
for the elevation of the female sex from the degraded, slavish position, which
it occupied in the heathen world;181 and even in this period it
produced such illustrious models of female virtue as Nonna, Anthusa, and
Monica, who commanded the highest respect of the heathens themselves. The
Christian emperors pursued this work, though the Roman legislation stops
considerably short of the later Germanic in regard to the rights of woman.
Constantine in 321 granted women the same right as men to control their
property, except in the sale of their landed estates. At the same time, from
regard to their modesty, he prohibited the summoning them in person before the
public tribunal. Theodosius I. in 390 was the first to allow the mother a
certain right of guardianship, which had formerly been intrusted exclusively to
men. Theodosius II. in 439 interdicted, but unfortunately with little success,
the scandalous trade of the lenones, who
lived by the prostitution of women, and paid a considerable license tax to the
state.182 Woman received
protection in various ways against the beastly passion of man. The rape of
consecrated virgins and widows was punishable, from the time of Constantine,
with death.183

2. In the marriage laws,
Constantine gave marriage its due freedom by abolishing the old Roman penalties
against celibacy and childlessness.184 On the other hand, marriage now came to be restricted under heavy
penalties by the introduction of the Old Testament prohibitions of marriage
within certain degrees of consanguinity, which subsequently were arbitrarily
extended even to the relation of cousin down to the third remove.185 Justinian forbade also marriage between godparent and godchild,
on the ground of spiritual kinship. But better than all, the dignity and
sanctity of marriage were now protected by restrictions upon the boundless
liberty of divorce which had obtained from the time of Augustus, and had vastly
hastened the decay of public morals. Still, the strict view of the fathers,
who, following the word of Christ, recognized adultery alone as a sufficient
ground of divorce, could not be carried out in the state.186 The legislation of the emperors in this matter wavered between
the licentiousness of Rome and the doctrine of the church. So late as the fifth
century we hear a Christian author complain that men exchange wives as they
would garments, and that the bridal chamber is exposed to sale like a shoe on
the market! Justinian attempted to
bring the public laws up to the wish of the church, but found himself compelled
to relax them; and his successor allowed divorce even on the ground of mutual
consent.187

Concubinage was forbidden from
the time of Constantine, and adultery punished as one of the grossest crimes.188 Yet here also pagan habit ever and anon reacted in practice, and
even the law seems to have long tolerated the wild marriage which rested only
on mutual agreement, and was entered into without convenant, dowry, or
ecclesiastical sanction.189 Solemnization
by the church was not required by the state as the condition of a legitimate
marriage till the eighth century. Second marriage, also, and mixed marriages
with heretics and heathens, continued to be allowed, notwithstanding the
disapproval of the stricter church teachers; only marriage with Jews was
prohibited, on account of their fanatical hatred of the Christians.190

3. The power of fathers over
their children, which according to the old Roman law extended even to their
freedom and life, had been restricted by Alexander Severus under the influence
of the monarchical spirit, which is unfavorable to private jurisdiction, and
was still further limited under Constantine. This emperor declared the killing
of a child by its father, which the Pompeian law left unpunished, to be one of
the greatest crimes.191 But the cruel
and unnatural practice of exposing children and selling them into slavery
continued for a long time, especially among the laboring and agricultural
classes. Even the indirect measures of Valentinian and Theodosius I. could not
eradicate the evil. Theodosius in 391 commanded that children which had been
sold as slaves by their father from poverty, should be free, and that without
indemnity to the purchasers; and Justinian in 529 gave all exposed children
without exception their freedom.192

§ 20. Social Reforms. The Institution of Slavery.

4. The institution of slavery193 remained throughout the empire,
and is recognized in the laws of Justinian as altogether legitimate.194 The Justinian code rests on the broad distinction of the human
race into freemen and slaves. It declares, indeed, the natural equality of men,
and so far rises above the theory of Aristotle, who regards certain races and
classes of men as irrevocably doomed, by their physical and intellectual
inferiority, to perpetual servitude; but it destroys the practical value of
this concession by insisting as sternly as ever on the inferior legal and
social condition of the slave, by degrading his marriage to the disgrace of
concubinage, by refusing him all legal remedy in case of adultery, by depriving
him of all power over his children, by making him an article of merchandise
like irrational beasts of burden, whose transfer from vender to buyer was a
legal transaction as valid and frequent as the sale of any other property. The
purchase and sale of slaves for from ten to seventy pieces of gold, according
to their age, strength, and training, was a daily occurrence.195 The number was not limited; many a master owning even two or
three thousand slaves.

The barbarian codes do not
essentially differ in this respect from the Roman. They, too, recognize slavery
as an ordinary condition of mankind and the slave as a marketable commodity.
All captives in war became slaves, and thousands of human lives were thus saved
from indiscriminate massacre and extermination. The victory of Stilicho over
Rhadagaisus threw 200,000 Goths and other Germans into the market, and lowered
the price of a slave from twenty-five pieces of gold to one. The capture and
sale of men was part of the piratical system along all the shores of Europe.
Anglo-Saxons were freely sold in Rome at the time of Gregory the Great. The barbarian
codes prohibited as severely as the Justinian code the debasing alliance of the
freeman with the slave, but they seem to excel the latter in acknowledging the
legality and religious sanctity of marriages between slaves; that of the
Lombards on the authority of the Scripture sentence: "Whom God has joined
together, let no man put asunder."

The legal wall of partition,
which separated the slaves from free citizens and excluded them from the
universal rights of man, was indeed undermined, but by no means broken down, by
the ancient church, who taught only the moral and religious equality of men. We
find slaveholders even among the bishops and the higher clergy of the empire.
Slaves belonged to the papal household at Rome, as we learn incidentally from
the acts of a Roman synod held in 501 in consequence of the disputed election
of Symmachus, where his opponents insisted upon his slaves being called in as
witnesses, while his adherents protested against this extraordinary request,
since the civil law excluded the slaves from the right of giving testimony
before a court of justice.196 Among the
barbarians, likewise, we read of slaveholding churches, and of special
provisions to protect their slaves.197 Constantine issued rigid laws against intermarriage with slaves,
all the offspring of which must be slaves; and against fugitive slaves (a.d. 319 and 326), who at that time in
great multitudes plundered deserted provinces or joined with hostile barbarians
against the empire. But on the other hand he facilitated manumission, permitted
it even on Sunday, and gave the clergy the right to emancipate their slaves
simply by their own word, without the witnesses and ceremonies required in
other cases.198 By Theodosius
and Justinian the liberation of slaves was still further encouraged. The latter
emperor abolished the penalty of condemnation to servitude, and by giving to
freed persons the rank and rights of citizens, he removed the stain which had
formerly attached to that class.199 The spirit of his laws favored the gradual abolition of domestic
slavery. In the Byzantine empire in general the differences of rank in society
were more equalized, though not so much on Christian principle as in the
interest of despotic monarchy. Despotism and extreme democracy meet in
predilection for universal equality and uniformity. Neither can suffer any
overshadowing greatness, save the majesty of the prince or the will of the
people. The one system knows none but slaves; the other, none but masters.

Nor was an entire abolition of
slavery at that time at all demanded or desired even by the church. As in the
previous period, she still thought it sufficient to insist on the kind
Christian treatment of slaves, enjoining upon them obedience for the sake of
the Lord, comforting them in their low condition with the thought of their
higher moral freedom and equality, and by the religious education of the slaves
making an inward preparation for the abolition of the institution. All hasty
and violent measures met with decided disapproval. The council of Gangra
threatens with the ban every one, who under pretext of religion seduces slaves
into contempt of their masters; and the council of Chalcedon, in its fourth
canon, on pain of excommunication forbids monasteries to harbor slaves without
permission of the masters, lest Christianity be guilty of encouraging
insubordination. The church fathers, so far as they enter this subject at all,
seem to look upon slavery as at once a necessary evil and a divine instrument
of discipline; tracing it to the curse on Ham and Canaan.200 It is true, they favor emancipation in individual cases, as an
act of Christian love on the part of the master, but not as a right on the part
of the slave; and the well-known passage: "If then mayest be made free,
use it rather," they understand not as a challenge to slaves to take the
first opportunity to gain their freedom, but, on the contrary, as a challenge
to remain in their servitude, since they are at all events inwardly free in
Christ, and their outward condition is of no account.201

Even St. Chrysostom, though of
all the church fathers the nearest to the emancipation theory and the most
attentive to the question of slavery in general, does not rise materially above
this view.202 According to
him mankind were originally created perfectly free and equal, without the
addition of a slave. But by the fall man lost the power of self-government, and
fell into a threefold bondage: the bondage of woman under man, of slave under
master, of subject under ruler. These three relations he considers divine
punishments and divine means of discipline. Thus slavery, as a divine
arrangement occasioned by the fall, is at once relatively justified and in
principle condemned. Now since Christ has delivered us from evil and its
consequences, slavery, according to Chrysostom, is in principle abolished in
the church, yet only in the sense in which sin and death are abolished.
Regenerate Christians are not slaves, but perfectly free men in Christ and
brethren among themselves. The exclusive authority of the one and subjection of
the other give place to mutual service in love. Consistently carried out, this
view leads of course to emancipation. Chrysostom, it is true, does not carry it
to that point, but he decidedly condemns all luxurious slaveholding, and thinks
one or two servants enough for necessary help, while many patricians had
hundreds and thousands. He advises the liberation of superfluous slaves, and
the education of all, that in case they should be liberated, they may know how
to take care of themselves. He is of opinion that the first Christian community
at Jerusalem, in connection with community of goods, emancipated all their
slaves;203 and thus he gives his hearers a hint to follow that
example. But of an appeal to slaves to break their bonds, this father shows of
course no trace; he rather, after apostolic precedent, exhorts them to
conscientious and cheerful obedience for Christ's sake, as earnestly as he
inculcates upon masters humanity and love. The same is true of Ambrose,
Augustine, and Peter Chrysologus of Ravenna († 458).

St. Augustine, the noblest
representative of the Latin church, in his profound work on the "City of
God," excludes slavery from the original idea of man and the final
condition of society, and views it as an evil consequent upon sin, yet under
divine direction and control. For God, he says, created man reasonable and lord
only over the unreasonable, not over man. The burden of servitude was justly
laid upon the sinner. Therefore the term servant is not found in the
Scriptures till Noah used it as a curse upon his offending son. Thus it was
guilt and not nature that deserved that name. The Latin word servus is supposed to be derived from servare [servire rather], or the preservation of
the prisoners of war from death, which itself implies the desert of sin. For
even in a just war there is sin on one side, and every victory humbles the
conquered by divine judgment, either reforming their sins or punishing them.
Daniel saw in the sins of the people the real cause of their captivity. Sin,
therefore, is the mother of servitude and first cause of man's subjection to
man; yet this does not come to pass except by the judgment of God, with whom
there is no injustice, and who knows how to adjust the various punishments to
the merits of the offenders .... The apostle exhorts the servants to obey their
masters and to serve them ex animo,
with good will; to the end that, if they cannot be made free from their
masters, they may make their servitude a freedom to themselves by serving them
not in deceitful fear, but in faithful love, until iniquity be overpassed, and
all man's principality and power be annulled, and God be all in all.204

As might be expected, after the
conversion of the emperors, and of rich and noble families, who owned most
slaves, cases of emancipation became more frequent.205 The biographer of St. Samson Xenodochos, a contemporary of
Justinian, says of him: "His troop of slaves he would not keep, still less
exercise over his fellow servants a lordly authority; he preferred magnanimously
to let them go free, and gave them enough for the necessaries of life."206 Salvianus, a Gallic presbyter of the fifth century, says that
slaves were emancipated daily.207 On the other hand, very much was done in the church to prevent
the increase of slavery; especially in the way of redeeming prisoners, to which
sometimes the gold and silver vessels of churches were applied. But we have no
reliable statistics for comparing even approximately the proportion of the
slaves to the free population at the close of the sixth century with the
proportion in the former period.

We infer then, that the
Christianity of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, though naturally conservative
and decidedly opposed to social revolution and violent measures of reform, yet
in its inmost instincts and ultimate tendencies favored the universal freedom
of man, and, by elevating the slave to spiritual equality with the master, and
uniformly treating him as capable of the same virtues, blessings, and rewards,
has placed the hateful institution of human bondage in the way of gradual
amelioration and final extinction. This result, however, was not reached in
Europe till many centuries after our period, nor by the influence of the church
alone, but with the help of various economical and political causes, the
unprofitableness of slavery, especially in more northern latitudes, the new
relations introduced by the barbarian conquests, the habits of the Teutonic tribes
settled within the Roman empire, the attachment of the rural slave to the soil,
and the change of the slave into the serf, who was as immovable as the soil,
and thus, in some degree independent on the caprice and despotism of his
master.

5. The poor and unfortunate in
general, above all the widows and orphans, prisoners and sick, who were so
terribly neglected in heathen times, now drew the attention of the imperial
legislators. Constantine in 315 prohibited the branding of criminals on the
forehead, "that the human countenance," as he said, "formed
after the image of heavenly beauty, should not be defaced."208 He provided against the inhuman maltreatment of prisoners before
their trial.209 To deprive poor
parents of all pretext for selling or exposing their children, he had them
furnished with food and clothing, partly at his own expense and partly at that
of the state.210 He likewise
endeavored, particularly by a law of the year 331, to protect the poor against
the venality and extortion of judges, advocates, and tax collectors, who
drained the people by their exactions.211 In the year 334 he ordered that widows, orphans, the sick, and
the poor should not be compelled to appear be. fore a tribunal outside their
own province. Valentinian, in 365, exempted widows and orphans from the ignoble
poll tax.212 In 364 he
intrusted the bishops with the supervision of the poor. Honorius did the same
in 409. Justinian, in 529, as we have before remarked, gave the bishops the
oversight of the state prisons, which they were to visit on Wednesdays and
Fridays, to bring home to the unfortunates the earnestness and comfort of
religion. The same emperor issued laws against usury and inhuman severity in
creditors, and secured benevolent and religious foundations by strict laws
against alienation of their revenues from the original design of the founders.
Several emperors and empresses took the church institutions for the poor and
sick, for strangers, widows, and orphans, under their special patronage,
exempted them from the usual taxes, and enriched or enlarged them from their
private funds.213 Yet in those
days, as still in ours, the private beneficence of Christian love took the
lead, and the state followed at a distance, rather with ratification and
patronage than with independent and original activity.214

§ 21. Abolition of Gladiatorial Shows.

6. And finally, one of the
greatest and most beautiful victories of Christian humanity over heathen
barbarism and cruelty was the abolition of gladiatorial contests, against which
the apologists in the second century had already raised the most earnest
protest.215

These bloody shows, in which
human beings, mostly criminals, prisoners of war, and barbarians, by hundreds
and thousands killed one another or were killed in fight with wild beasts for
the amusement of the spectators, were still in full favor at the beginning of
the period before us. The pagan civilization here proves itself impotent. In
its eyes the life of a barbarian is of no other use than to serve the cruel amusement
of the Roman people, who wish quietly to behold with their own eyes and enjoy
at home the martial bloodshedding of their frontiers. Even the humane Symmachus
gave an exhibition of this kind during his consulate (391), and was enraged
that twenty-nine Saxon prisoners of war escaped this public shame by suicide.216 While the Vestal virgins existed, it was their special
prerogative to cheer on the combatants in the amphitheatre to the bloody work,
and to give the signal for the deadly stroke.217

The contagion of the thirst for
blood, which these spectacles generated, is presented to us in a striking
example by Augustine in his Confessions.218 His friend Alypius, afterward bishop of Tagaste, was induced by
some friends in 385 to visit the amphitheatre at Rome, and went resolved to
lock himself up against all impressions. "When they reached the spot,"
says Augustine, "and took their places on the hired seats, everything
already foamed with bloodthirsty delight. But Alypius, with closed eyes,
forbade his soul to yield to this sin. O had he but stopped also his ears! For when, on the fall of a gladiator in the
contest, the wild shout of the whole multitude fell upon him, overcome by
curiosity he opened his eyes, though prepared to despise and resist the sight.
But he was smitten with a more grievous wound in the soul than the combatant in
the body, and fell more lamentably .... For when he saw the blood, he imbibed
at once the love of it, turned not away, fastened his eyes upon it, caught the
spirit of rage and vengeance before he knew it, and, fascinated with the
murderous game, became drunk with bloodthirsty joy .... He looked, shouted
applause, burned, and carried with him thence the frenzy, by which he was drawn
to go back, not only with those who had taken him there, but before them, and
taking others with him."

Christianity finally succeeded
in closing the amphitheatre. Constantine, who in his earlier reign himself did
homage to the popular custom in this matter, and exposed a great multitude of
conquered barbarians to death in the amphitheatre at Treves, for which he was
highly commended by a heathen orator,219 issued in 325, the year of the
great council of the church at Nice, the first prohibition of the bloody
spectacles, "because they cannot be pleasing in a time of public
peace."220 But this edict,
which is directed to the prefects of Phoenicia, had no permanent effect even in
the East, except at Constantinople, which was never stained with the blood of
gladiators. In Syria and especially in the West, above all in Rome, the deeply
rooted institution continued into the fifth century. Honorius (395-423), who at
first considered it indestructible, abolished the gladiatorial shows about 404,
and did so at the instance of the heroic self-denial of an eastern monk by the
name of Telemachus, who journeyed to Rome expressly to protest against this
inhuman barbarity, threw himself into the arena, separated the combatants, and
then was torn to pieces by the populace, a martyr to humanity.221 Yet this put a stop only to the bloody combats of men. Unbloody
spectacles of every kind, even on the high festivals of the church and amidst
the invasions of the barbarians, as we see by the grievous complaints of a
Chrysostom, an Augustine, and a Salvian, were as largely and as passionately
attended as ever; and even fights with wild animals, in which human life was
generally more or less sacrificed, continued,222 and, to the scandal of the
Christian name, are tolerated in Spain and South America to this day.

§ 22. Evils of the Union of Church and State. Secularization of
the Church.

We turn now to the dark side of
the union of the church with the state; to the consideration of the
disadvantages which grew out of their altered relation after the time of
Constantine, and which continue to show themselves in the condition of the
church in Europe to our own time.

These evil results may be summed
up under the general designation of the secularization of the church. By taking
in the whole population of the Roman empire the church became, indeed, a church
of the masses, a church of the people, but at the same time more or less a
church of the world. Christianity became a matter of fashion. The number of
hypocrites and formal professors rapidly increased;223 strict discipline, zeal,
self-sacrifice, and brotherly love proportionally ebbed away; and many heathen
customs and usages, under altered names, crept into the worship of God and the
life of the Christian people. The Roman state had grown up under the influence
of idolatry, and was not to be magically transformed at a stroke. With the
secularizing process, therefore, a paganizing tendency went hand in hand.

Yet the pure spirit of
Christianity could by no means be polluted by this. On the contrary it retained
even in the darkest days its faithful and steadfast confessors, conquered new
provinces from time to time, constantly reacted, both within the established
church and outside of it, in the form of monasticism, against the secular and the
pagan influences, and, in its very struggle with the prevailing corruption,
produced such church fathers as Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Augustine, such
exemplary Christian mothers as Nonna, Anthusa, and Monica, and such
extraordinary saints of the desert as Anthony, Pachomius, and Benedict. New
enemies and dangers called forth new duties and virtues, which could now unfold
themselves on a larger stage, and therefore also on a grander scale. Besides,
it must not be forgotten, that the tendency to secularization is by no means to
be ascribed only to Constantine and the influence of the state, but to the
deeper source of the corrupt heart of man, and did reveal itself, in fact,
though within a much narrower compass, long before, under the heathen emperors,
especially in the intervals of repose, when the earnestness and zeal of
Christian life slumbered and gave scope to a worldly spirit.

The difference between the age
after Constantine and the age before consists, therefore, not at all in the
cessation of true Christianity and the entrance of false, but in the
preponderance of the one over the other. The field of the church was now much
larger, but with much good soil it included far more that was stony, barren,
and overgrown with weeds. The line between church and world, between regenerate
and unregenerate, between those who were Christians in name and those who were
Christians in heart, was more or less obliterated, and in place of the former
hostility between the two parties there came a fusion of them in the same
outward communion of baptism and confession. This brought the conflict between
light and darkness, truth and falsehood, Christ and antichrist, into the bosom
of Christendom itself.

§23. Worldliness and Extravagance.

The secularization of the church
appeared most strikingly in the prevalence of mammon worship and luxury
compared with the poverty and simplicity of the primitive Christians. The
aristocracy of the later empire had a morbid passion for outward display and
the sensual enjoyments of wealth, without the taste, the politeness, or the
culture of true civilization. The gentlemen measured their fortune by the
number of their marble palaces, baths, slaves, and gilded carriages; the ladies
indulged in raiment of silk and gold ornamented with secular or religious
figures, and in heavy golden necklaces, bracelets, and rings, and went to
church in the same flaunting dress as to the theatre.224 Chrysostom addresses a
patrician of Antioch: "You count so and so many acres of land, ten or
twenty palaces, as many baths, a thousand or two thousand slaves, carriages
plated with silver and gold."225 Gregory Nazianzen, who presided
for a time in the second ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381, gives us
the following picture, evidently rhetorically colored, yet drawn from life, of
the luxury of the degenerate civilization of that period: "We repose in
splendor on high and sumptuous cushions, upon the most exquisite covers, which
one is almost afraid to touch, and are vexed if we but hear the voice of a
moaning pauper; our chamber must breathe the odor of flowers, even rare
flowers; our table must flow with the most fragrant and costly ointment, so
that we become perfectly effeminate. Slaves must stand ready, richly adorned
and in order, with waving, maidenlike hair, and faces shorn perfectly smooth,
more adorned throughout than is good for lascivious eyes; some, to hold cups
both delicately and firmly with the tips of their fingers, others, to fan fresh
air upon the head. Our table must bend under the load of dishes, while all the
kingdoms of nature, air, water and earth, furnish copious contributions, and
there must be almost no room for the artificial products of cook and baker ....
The poor man is content with water; but we fill our goblets with wine to
drunkenness, nay, immeasurably beyond it. We refuse one wine, another we
pronounce excellent when well flavored, over a third we institute philosophical
discussions; nay, we count it a pity, if he does not, as a king, add to the
domestic wine a foreign also."226 Still more unfavorable are the pictures which, a half century
later, the Gallic presbyter, Salvianus, draws of the general moral condition of
the Christians in the Roman empire.227

It is true, these earnest
protests against degeneracy themselves, as well as the honor in which
monasticism and ascetic contempt of the world were universally held, attest the
existence of a better spirit. But the uncontrollable progress of avarice, prodigality,
voluptuousness, theatre going, intemperance, lewdness, in short, of all the
heathen vices, which Christianity had come to eradicate, still carried the
Roman empire and people with rapid strides toward dissolution, and gave it at
last into the hands of the rude, but simple and morally vigorous barbarians.
When the Christians were awakened by the crashings of the falling empire, and
anxiously asked why God permitted it, Salvian, the Jeremiah of his time,
answered: "Think of your vileness and your crimes, and see whether you are
worthy of the divine protection."228 Nothing but the divine judgment of destruction upon this
nominally Christian, but essentially heathen world, could open the way for the
moral regeneration of society. There must be new, fresh nations, if the
Christian civilization prepared in the old Roman empire was to take firm root
and bear ripe fruit.

§ 24. Byzantine Court Christianity.

The unnatural confusion of Christianity
with the world culminated in the imperial court of Constantinople, which, it is
true, never violated moral decency so grossly as the court of a Nero or a
Domitian, but in vain pomp and prodigality far outdid the courts of the better
heathen emperors, and degenerated into complete oriental despotism. The
household of Constantius, according to the description of Libanius,229 embraced no less than a
thousand barbers, a thousand cup bearers, a thousand cooks, and so many eunuchs,
that they could be compared only to the insects of a summer day. This boundless
luxury was for a time suppressed by the pagan Julian, who delighted in stoical
and cynical severity, and was fond of displaying it; but under his Christian
successors the same prodigality returned; especially under Theodosius and his
sons. These emperors, who prohibited idolatry upon pain of death, called their
laws, edicts, and palaces "divine," bore themselves as gods upon
earth, and, on the rare occasions when they showed themselves to the people,
unfurled an incredible magnificence and empty splendor.

"When Arcadius," to
borrow a graphic description from a modern historian, "condescended to
reveal to the public the majesty of the sovereign, he was preceded by a vast multitude
of attendants, dukes, tribunes, civil and military officers, their horses
glittering with golden ornaments, with shields of gold set with precious
stones, and golden lances. They proclaimed the coming of the emperor, and
commanded the ignoble crowd to clear the streets before him. The emperor stood
or reclined on a gorgeous chariot, surrounded by his immediate attendants,
distinguished by shields with golden bosses set round with golden eyes, and
drawn by white mules with gilded trappings; the chariot was set with precious
stones, and golden fans vibrated with the movement, and cooled the air. The
multitude contemplated at a distance the snow-white cushions, the silken
carpets, with dragons inwoven upon them in rich colors. Those who were
fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the emperor, beheld his ears loaded with
golden rings, his arms with golden chains, his diadem set with gems of all
hues, his purple robes, which, with the diadem, were reserved for the emperor,
in all their sutures embroidered with precious stones. The wondering people, on
their return to their homes, could talk of nothing but the splendor of the
spectacle: the robes, the mules, the carpets, the size and splendor of the
jewels. On his return to the palace, the emperor walked on gold; ships were
employed with the express purpose of bringing gold dust from remote provinces,
which was strewn by the officious care of a host of attendants, so that the
emperor rarely set his foot on the bare pavement."230

The Christianity of the
Byzantine court lived in the atmosphere of intrigue, dissimulation, and
flattery. Even the court divines and bishops could hardly escape the
contamination, though their high office, with its sacred functions, was certainly
a protecting wall around them. One of these bishops congratulated Constantine,
at the celebration of the third decennium of his reign (the tricennalia), that
he had been appointed by God ruler over all in this world, and would reign with
the Son of God in the other! This
blasphemous flattery was too much even for the vain emperor, and he exhorted
the bishop rather to pray God that he might be worthy to be one of his servants
in this world and the next.231 Even the church historian and bishop Eusebius, who elsewhere knew
well enough how to value the higher blessings, and lamented the indescribable
hypocrisy of the sham Christianity around the emperor,232 suffered himself to be so far
blinded by the splendor of the imperial favor, as to see in a banquet, which
Constantine gave in his palace to the bishops at the close of the council of
Nice, in honor of his twenty years' reign (the vicennalia), an emblem of the
glorious reign of Christ upon the earth!233

And these were bishops, of whom
many still bore in their body the marks of the Diocletian persecution. So
rapidly had changed the spirit of the age. While, on the other hand, the
well-known firmness of Ambrose with Theodosius, and the life of Chrysostom,
afford delightful proof that there were not wanting, even in this age, bishops
of Christian earnestness and courage to rebuke the sins of crowned heads.

§ 25. Intrusion of Politics into Religion.

With the union of the church and
the state begins the long and tedious history of their collisions and their
mutual struggles for the mastery: the state seeking to subject the church to
the empire, the church to subject the state to the hierarchy, and both very
often transgressing the limits prescribed to their power in that word of the
Lord: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the
things that are God's." From the
time of Constantine, therefore, the history of the church and that of the world
in Europe are so closely interwoven, that neither can be understood without the
other. On the one hand, the political rulers, as the highest members and the
patrons of the church, claimed a right to a share in her government, and
interfered in various ways in her external and internal affairs, either to her
profit or to her prejudice. On the other hand, the bishops and patriarchs, as
the highest dignitaries and officers of the state religion, became involved in
all sorts of secular matters and in the intrigues of the Byzantine court. This
mutual intermixture, on the whole, was of more injury than benefit to the
church and to religion, and fettered her free and natural development.

Of a separation of religion and
politics, of the spiritual power from the temporal, heathen antiquity knew
nothing, because it regarded religion itself only from a natural point of view,
and subjected it to the purposes of the all-ruling state, the highest known
form of human society. The Egyptian kings, as Plutarch tells us, were at the
same time priests, or were received into the priesthood at their election. In
Greece the civil magistrate had supervision of the priests and sanctuaries.234 In Rome, after the time of Numa, this supervision was intrusted
to a senator, and afterward united with the imperial office. All the pagan
emperors, from Augustus235 to Julian the Apostate, were at the same time supreme
pontiffs (Pontifices Maximi), the heads of the state religion, emperor-popes.
As such they could not only perform all priestly functions, even to offering
sacrifices, when superstition or policy prompted them to do so, but they also
stood at the head of the highest sacerdotal college (of fifteen or more
Pontifices), which in turn regulated and superintended the three lower classes
of priests (the Epulones, Quindecemviri, and Augures), the temples and altars,
the sacrifices, divinations, feasts, and ceremonies, the exposition of the
Sibylline books, the calendar, in short, all public worship, and in part even
the affairs of marriage and inheritance.

Now it may easily be supposed
that the Christian emperors, who, down to Gratian (about 380), even retained
the name and the insignia of the Pontifex Maximus, claimed the same oversight
of the Christian religion established in the empire, which their predecessors
had had of the heathen; only with this material difference, that they found
here a stricter separation between the religious element and the political, the
ecclesiastical and the secular, and were obliged to bind themselves to the
already existing doctrines, usages, and traditions of the church which claimed
divine institution and authority.

§ 26. The Emperor-Papacy and the Hierarchy.

And this, in point of fact, took
place first under Constantine, and developed under his successors, particularly
under Justinian, into the system of the Byzantine imperial papacy,236 or of the supremacy of the
state over the church.

Constantine once said to the
bishops at a banquet, that he also, as a Christian emperor, was a divinely
appointed bishop, a bishop over the external affairs of the church, while the
internal affairs belonged to the bishops proper.237 In this pregnant word he expressed the new posture of the civil
sovereign toward the church in a characteristic though indefinite and equivocal
way. He made there a distinction between two divinely authorized episcopates;
one secular or imperial, corresponding with the old office of Pontifex Maximus,
and extending over the whole Roman empire, therefore ecumenical or universal;
the other spiritual or sacerdotal, divided among the different diocesan
bishops, and appearing properly in its unity and totality only in a general
council.

Accordingly, though not yet even
baptized, he acted as the patron and universal temporal bishop of the church;238 summoned the first ecumenical
council for the settlement of the controversy respecting the divinity of
Christ; instituted and deposed bishops; and occasionally even delivered sermons
to the people; but on the other hand, with genuine tact (though this was in his
earlier period, a.d. 314), kept
aloof from the Donatist controversy, and referred to the episcopal tribunal as
the highest and last resort in purely spiritual matters. In the exercise of his
imperial right of supervision he did not follow any clear insight and definite
theory so much as an instinctive impulse of control, a sense of
politico-religious duty, and the requirements of the time. His word only
raised, did not solve, the question of the relation between the imperial and
the sacerdotal episcopacy and the extent of their respective jurisdictions in a
Christian state.

This question became thenceforth
the problem and the strife of history both sacred and secular, ran through the
whole mediaeval conflict between emperor and pope, between imperial and
hierarchical episcopacy, and recurs in modified form in every Protestant
established church.

In general, from this time forth
the prevailing view was, that God has divided all power between the priesthood
and the kingdom (sacerdotium et imperium), giving internal or spiritual
affairs, especially doctrine and worship, to the former, and external or
temporal affairs, such as government and discipline, to the latter.239 But internal and external here vitally interpenetrate and depend
on each other, as soul and body, and frequent reciprocal encroachments and
collisions are inevitable upon state-church ground. This becomes manifest in
the period before us in many ways, especially in the East, where the Byzantine
despotism had freer play, than in the distant West.

The emperors after Constantine
(as the popes after them) summoned the general councils, bore the necessary
expenses, presided in the councils through commissions, gave to the decisions
in doctrine and discipline the force of law for the whole Roman empire, and
maintained them by their authority. The emperors nominated or confirmed the
most influential metropolitans and patriarchs. They took part in all
theological disputes, and thereby inflamed the passion of parties. They
protected orthodoxy and punished heresy with the arm of power. Often, however,
they took the heretical side, and banished orthodox bishops from their sees.
Thus Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, and Monophysitism successively found
favor and protection at court. Even empresses meddled in the internal and
external concerns of the church. Justina endeavored with all her might to
introduce Arianism in Milan, but met a successful opponent in bishop Ambrose.
Eudoxia procured the deposition and banishment of the noble Chrysostom.
Theodora, raised from the stage to the throne, ruled the emperor Justinian, and
sought by every kind of intrigue to promote the victory of the Monophysite
heresy. It is true, the doctrinal decisions proceeded properly from the
councils, and could not have maintained themselves long without that sanction.
But Basiliscus, Zeno, Justinian I., Heraclius, Constans II., and other emperors
issued many purely ecclesiastical edicts and rescripts without consulting the
councils, or through the councils by their own influence upon them. Justinian
opens his celebrated codex with the imperial creed on the trinity and the
imperial anathema against Nestorius, Eutyches, Apollinaris, on the basis
certainly of the apostolic church and of the four ecumenical councils, but in
the consciousness of absolute legislative and executive authority even over the
faith and conscience of all his subjects.

The voice of the catholic church
in this period conceded to the Christian emperors in general, with the duty of
protecting and supporting the church, the right of supervision over its
external affairs, but claimed for the clergy, particularly for the bishops, the
right to govern her within, to fix her doctrine, to direct her worship. The new
state of things was regarded as a restoration of the Mosaic and Davidic
theocracy on Christian soil, and judged accordingly. But in respect to the
extent and application of the emperor's power in the church, opinion was
generally determined, consciously or unconsciously, by some special religious
interest. Hence we find that catholics and heretics, Athanasians and Arians,
justified or condemned the interference of the emperor in the development of
doctrine, the appointment and deposition of bishops, and the patronage and
persecution of parties, according as they themselves were affected by them. The
same Donatists who first appealed to the imperial protection, when the decision
went against them denounced all intermeddling of the state with the church.
There were bishops who justified even the most arbitrary excesses of the
Byzantine despotism in religion by reference to Melchizedek and the pious kings
of Israel, and yielded them selves willing tools of the court. But there were
never wanting also fearless defenders of the rights of the church against the
civil power. Maximus the Confessor declared before his judges in
Constantinople, that Melchizedek was a type of Christ alone, not of the
emperor.

In general the hierarchy formed
a powerful and wholesome check on the imperial papacy, and preserved the
freedom and independence of the church toward the temporal power. That age had
only the alternative of imperial or episcopal despotism; and of these the
latter was the less hurtful and the more profitable, because it represented the
higher intellectual and moral interests. Without the hierarchy, the church in
the Roman empire and among the barbarians would have been the football of civil
and military despots. It was, therefore, of the utmost importance, that the
church, at the time of her marriage with the state, had already grown so large
and strong as to withstand all material alteration by imperial caprice, and all
effort to degrade her into a tool. The Apostolic Constitutions place the
bishops even above all kings and magistrates.240 Chrysostom says that the first ministers of the state enjoyed no
such honor as the ministers of the church. And in general the ministers of the
church deserved their honor. Though there were prelates enough who abused their
power to sordid ends, still there were men like Athanasius, Basil, Ambrose,
Chrysostom, Augustine, Leo, the purest and most venerable characters, which
meet us in the fourth and fifth centuries, far surpassing the contemporary
emperors. It was the universal opinion that the doctrines and institutions of
the church, resting on divine revelation, are above all human power and will.
The people looked, in blind faith and superstition, to the clergy as their
guides in all matters of conscience, and even the emperors had to pay the
bishops, as the fathers of the churches, the greatest reverence, kiss their
hands, beg their blessing, and submit to their admonition and discipline. In
most cases the emperors were mere tools of parties in the church. Arbitrary
laws which were imposed upon the church from without rarely survived their
makers, and were condemned by history. For there is a divine authority above
all thrones, and kings, and bishops, and a power of truth above all the
machinations of falsehood and intrigue.

The Western church, as a whole,
preserved her independence far more than the Eastern; partly through the great
firmness of the Roman character, partly through the favor of political
circumstances, and of remoteness from the influence and the intrigues of the
Byzantine court. Here the hierarchical principle developed itself from the time
of Leo the Great even to the absolute papacy, which, however, after it
fulfilled its mission for the world among the barbarian nations of the middle
ages, degenerated into an insufferable tyranny over conscience, and thus
exposed itself to destruction. In the Catholic system the freedom and
independence of the church involve the supremacy of an exclusive priesthood and
papacy; in the Protestant, they can be realized only on the broader basis of
the universal priesthood, in the self-government of the Christian people;
though this is, as yet, in all Protestant established churches more or less
restricted by the power of the state.

§ 27. Restriction of Religious Freedom, and Beginnings of
Persecution of Heretics.

Sam. Eliot:
History of Liberty. Boston, 1858, 4 vols. Early Christians, vols. i. and ii.
The most important facts are scattered through the sections of the larger
church histories on the heresies, the doctrinal controversies, and church
discipline.

An inevitable consequence of the
union of church and state was restriction of religious freedom in faith and
worship, and the civil punishment of departure from the doctrine and discipline
of the established church.

The church, dominant and
recognized by the state, gained indeed external freedom and authority, but in a
measure at the expense of inward liberty and self-control. She came, as we have
seen in the previous section, under the patronage and supervision of the head
of the Christian state, especially in the Byzantine empire. In the first three
centuries, the church, with all her external lowliness and oppression, enjoyed
the greater liberty within, in the development of her doctrines and
institutions, by reason of her entire separation from the state.

But the freedom of error and
division was now still more restricted. In the ante-Nicene age, heresy and
schism were as much hated and abhorred indeed, as afterward, yet were met only
in a moral way, by word and writing, and were punished with excommunication
from the rights of the church. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and even Lactantius
were the first advocates of the principle of freedom of conscience, and
maintained, against the heathen, that religion was essentially a matter of free
will, and could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion not by outward
force.241 All they say
against the persecution of Christians by the heathen applies in full to the
persecution of heretics by the church. After the Nicene age all departures from
the reigning state-church faith were not only abhorred and excommunicated as
religious errors, but were treated also as crimes against the Christian state,
and hence were punished with civil penalties; at first with deposition,
banishment, confiscation, and, after Theodosius, even with death.

This persecution of heretics was
a natural consequence of the union of religious and civil duties and rights, the
confusion of the civil and the ecclesiastical, the judicial and the moral,
which came to pass since Constantine. It proceeded from the state and from the
emperors, who in this respect showed themselves the successors of the
Pontifices Maximi, with their relation to the church reversed. The church,
indeed, steadfastly adhered to the principle that, as such, she should employ
only spiritual penalties, excommunication in extreme cases; as in fact Christ
and the apostles expressly spurned and prohibited all carnal weapons, and would
rather suffer and die than use violence. But, involved in the idea of Jewish
theocracy and of a state church, she practically confounded in various ways the
position of the law and that of the gospel, and in theory approved the application
of forcible measures to heretics, and not rarely encouraged and urged the state
to it; thus making herself at least indirectly responsible for the persecution.
This is especially, true of the Roman church in the times of her greatest
power, in the middle age and down to the end of the sixteenth century; and by
this course that church has made herself almost more offensive in the eyes of
the world and of modern civilization than by her peculiar doctrines and usages.
The Protestant reformation dispelled the dream that Christianity was identical
with an outward organization, or the papacy, and gave a mighty shock thereby to
the principle of ecclesiastical exclusiveness. Yet, properly speaking, it was
not till the eighteenth century that a radical revolution of views was
accomplished in regard to religious toleration; and the progress of toleration
and free worship has gone hand in hand with the gradual loosening of the
state-church basis and with the clearer separation of civil and religious
rights and of the temporal and spiritual power.

In the, beginning of his reign,
Constantine proclaimed full freedom of religion (312), and in the main
continued tolerably true to it; at all events he used no violent measures, as
his successors did. This toleration, however, was not a matter of fixed
principle with him, but merely of temporary policy; a necessary consequence of
the incipient separation of the Roman throne from idolatry, and the natural
transition from the sole supremacy of the heathen religion to the same
supremacy of the Christian. Intolerance directed itself first against
heathenism; but as the false religion gradually died out of itself, and at any
rate had no moral energy for martyrdom, there resulted no such bloody
persecutions of idolatry under the Christian emperors, as there had been of
Christianity under their heathen predecessors. Instead of Christianity, the
intolerance of the civil power now took up Christian heretics, whom it
recognized as such. Constantine even in his day limited the freedom and the
privileges which he conferred, to the catholic, that is, the prevailing
orthodox hierarchical church, and soon after the Council of Nice, by an edict
of the year 326, expressly excluded heretics and schismatics from these
privileges.242 Accordingly he
banished the leaders of Arianism and ordered their writings to be burned, but
afterward, wavering in his views of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and persuaded
over by some bishops and his sister, he recalled Arius and banished Athanasius.
He himself was baptized shortly before his death by an Arian bishop. His son
Constantius was a fanatical persecutor both of idolatry and the Nicene
orthodoxy, and endeavored with all his might to establish Arianism alone in the
empire. Hence the earnest protest of the orthodox bishops, Hosius, Athanasius,
and Hilary, against this despotism and in favor of toleration;243 which came, however, we have to
remember, from parties who were themselves the sufferers under intolerance, and
who did not regard the banishment of the Arians as unjust.

Under Julian the Apostate
religious liberty was again proclaimed, but only as the beginning of return to
the exclusive establishment of heathenism; the counterpart, therefore, of
Constantine's toleration. After his early death Arianism again prevailed, at
least in the East, and showed itself more, intolerant and violent than the
catholic orthodoxy.

At last Theodosius the Great,
the first emperor who was baptized in the Nicene faith, put an end to the Arian
interregnum, proclaimed the exclusive authority of the Nicene creed, and at the
same time enacted the first rigid penalties not only against the pagan
idolatry, the practice of which was thenceforth a capital crime in the empire,
but also against all Christian heresies and sects. The ruling principle of his
public life was the unity of the empire and of the orthodox church. Soon after
his baptism, in 380, he issued, in connection with his weak coëmperors, Gratian
and Valentinian II., to the inhabitants of Constantinople, then the chief seat
of Arianism, the following edict: "We, the three emperors, will, that all
our subjects steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter
to the Romans, which has been faithfully preserved by tradition, and which is
now professed by the pontiff Damasus, of Rome, and Peter, bishop of Alexandria,
a man of apostolic holiness. According to the institution of the apostles and
the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe in the one Godhead of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of equal majesty in the holy Trinity. We order
that the adherents of this faith be called Catholic Christians; we brand
all the senseless followers of other religions with the infamous name of heretics,
and forbid their conventicles assuming the name of churches. Besides the
condemnation of divine justice, they must expect the heavy penalties which our
authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict."244 In the course of fifteen years this emperor issued at least
fifteen penal laws against heretics,245 by which he gradually deprived
them of all right to the exercise of their religion, excluded them from all
civil offices, and threatened them with fines, confiscation, banishment, and in
some cases, as the Manichaeans, the Audians, and even the Quartodecimanians,
with death.

From Theodosius therefore dates
the state-church theory of the persecution of heretics, and the embodiment of
it in legislation. His primary design, it is true, was rather to terrify and
convert, than to punish, the refractory subjects.246

From the theory, however, to the
practice was a single step; and this step his rival and colleague, Maximus,
took, when, at the instigation of the unworthy bishop Ithacius, he caused the
Spanish bishop, Priscillian, with six respectable adherents of his
Manichaean-like sect (two presbyters, two deacons, the poet Latronian, and
Euchrocia, a noble matron of Bordeaux), to be tortured and beheaded with the
sword at Treves in 385. This was the first shedding of the blood of heretics by
a Christian prince for religious opinions. The bishops assembled at Treves,
with the exception of Theognistus, approved this act.

But the better feeling of the
Christian church shrank from it with horror. The bishops Ambrose of Milan,247 and Martin of Tours,248 raised a memorable protest
against it, and broke off all communion with Ithacius and the other bishops who
had approved the execution. Yet it should not be forgotten that these bishops,
at least Ambrose, were committed against the death penalty in general, and in
other respects had no indulgence for heathens and heretics.249 The whole thing, too, was irregularly done; on the one hand the
bishops appeared as accusers in a criminal cause, and on the other a temporal
judge admitted an appeal from the episcopal jurisdiction, and pronounced an
opinion in a matter of faith. Subsequently the functions of the temporal and
spiritual courts in the trial of heretics were more accurately distinguished.

The execution of the
Priscillianists is the only instance of the bloody punishment of
heretics in this period, as it is the first in the history of Christianity. But
the propriety of violent measures against heresy was thenceforth vindicated
even by the best fathers of the church. Chrysostom recommends, indeed,
Christian love toward heretics and heathens, and declares against their
execution, but approved the prohibition of their assemblies and the
confiscation of their churches; and he acted accordingly against the Novatians
and the Quartodecimanians, so that many considered his own subsequent
misfortunes as condign punishment.250 Jerome, appealing to Deut. xiii. 6-10, seems to justify even the
penalty of death against religious errorists.251

Augustine, who himself belonged
nine years to the Manichaean sect, and was wonderfully converted by the grace
of God to the Catholic church, without the slightest pressure from without,
held at first the truly evangelical view, that heretics and schismatics should
not be violently dealt with, but won by instruction and conviction; but after
the year 400 he turned and retracted this view, in consequence of his
experience with the Donatists, whom he endeavored in vain to convert by
disputation and writing, while many submitted to the imperial laws.252 Thenceforth he was led to advocate the persecution of heretics, partly
by his doctrine of the Christian state, partly by the seditious excesses of the
fanatical Circumcelliones, partly by the hope of a wholesome effect of temporal
punishments, and partly by a false interpretation of the Cogite intrare, in the parable of the great
supper, Luke xiv. 23.253 "It is,
indeed, better," says he, "that men should be brought to serve God by
instruction than by fear of punishment or by pain. But because the former means
are better, the latter must not therefore be neglected .... Many must often be
brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal
suffering, before they attain the highest grade of religious development ....
The Lord himself orders that the guests be first invited, then compelled, to
his great supper."254 This father
thinks that, if the state be denied the right to punish religious error,
neither should she punish any other crime, like murder or adultery, since Paul,
in Gal. v. 19, attributes divisions and sects to the same source in the flesh.255 He charges his Donatist opponents with inconsistency in seeming
to approve the emperors' prohibitions of idolatry, but condemning their
persecution of Christian heretics. It is to the honor of Augustine's heart,
indeed, that in actual cases he earnestly urged upon the magistrates clemency
and humanity, and thus in practice remained true to his noble maxim:
"Nothing conquers but truth, the victory of truth is love."256 But his theory, as Neander justly observes, "contains the
germ of the whole system of spiritual despotism, intolerance, and persecution,
even to the court of the Inquisition."257 The great authority of his name was often afterward made to
justify cruelties from which he himself would have shrunk with horror. Soon
after him, Leo the Great, the first representative of consistent, exclusive,
universal papacy, advocated even the penalty of death for heresy.258

Henceforth none but the
persecuted parties, from time to time, protested against religious persecution;
being made, by their sufferings, if not from principle, at least from policy
and self-interest, the advocates of toleration. Thus the Donatist bishop Petilian,
in Africa, against whom Augustine wrote, rebukes his Catholic opponents, as
formerly his countryman Tertullian had condemned the heathen persecutors of the
Christians, for using outward force in matters of conscience; appealing to
Christ and the apostles, who never persecuted, but rather suffered and died.
"Think you," says he, "to serve God by killing us with your own
hand? Ye err, ye err, if ye, poor
mortals, think this; God has not hangmen for priests. Christ teaches us to bear
wrong, not to revenge it." The
Donatist bishop Gaudentius says: "God appointed prophets and fishermen,
not princes and soldiers, to spread the faith." Still we cannot forget, that the Donatists were the first who
appealed to the imperial tribunal in an ecclesiastical matter, and did not,
till after that tribunal had decided against them, turn against the
state-church system.

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

130 Thus the bishop Donatus of Carthage in 347 rejected the imperial
commissioners, Paulus and Macarius, with the exclamation: "Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?"
See Optatus Milev.: De schismate Donat. l. iii. c. 3. The Donatists, however,
were the first to invoke the imperial intervention in their controversies, and
would doubtless have spoken very differently, had the decision turned in their
favor.

133 This view is now very prevalent in America. It was not formerly
so. Jonathan Edwards, in his "History of Redemption," a practical and
edifying survey of church history as an unfolding of the plan of redemption,
even saw in the accession of Constantine a type of the future appearing of
Christ in the clouds for the redemption of his people, and attributed to it the
most beneficent results; to wit: "(1) The Christian church was thereby
wholly delivered from persecution .... (2) God now appeared to execute terrible
judgments on their enemies .... (3) Heathenism now was in a great measure
abolished throughout the Roman empire .... (4) The Christian church was brought
into a state of great peace and prosperity." ... "This
revolution," he further says, p. 312, "was the greatest that had
occurred since the flood. Satan, the prince of darkness, that king and god of
the heathen world, was cast out. The roaring lion was conquered by the Lamb of
God in the strongest dominion he ever had. This was a remarkable accomplishment
of Jerem. x. 11: 'The gods that have not made the heaven and the earth, even
they shall perish from the earth and from the heavens.' " This work, still
much read in America and England, was written, to be sure, Iong before the
separation of church and state in New England, viz., in 1739 (first printed in
Edinburgh in 1774, twenty-six years after the author's death). But the great
difference of the judgment of this renowned Puritan divine from the prevailing
American opinion of the present day is an interesting proof that our view of
history is very much determined by the ecclesiastical circumstances in which we
live, and at the same time that the whole question of church and state is not
at all essential in Christian theology and ethics. In America all confessions,
even the Roman Catholics, are satisfied with the separation, while in Europe
with few exceptions it is the reverse.

140 So early as 314 he caused to be paid to the bishop Caecilian of
Carthage 3,000 folles (triscilivou"
fovlei"
£18,000) from the public treasury of the province for the catholic churches in
Africa, Numidia, and Mauritania, promising further gifts for similar purposes.
Euseb: H. E. x. 6, and Vit. Const. iv. 28.

145 See the Vita S. Joannis Eleemosynarii (the next to the last
catholic patriarch of Alexandria) in the Acta Sanct. Bolland. ad 23 Jan.

146 The ptwcotrofei'a, nosokomei'a,
ojrfanotrofei'a, ghrokomei'aandxenw'ne"orxenodocei'a,
as they were called; which all sprang from the church. Especially favored was
the Basilias for sick and strangers in Caesarea, named after its
founder, the bishop Basil the Great. Basil. Ep. 94. Gregor. Naz. Orat. 27 and
30.

147 Inferno, canto xix. vs. 112-118, as translated by Wright (with two
slight alterations). Milton, in his prose works, has translated this passage as
well as that of Ariosto, where he humorously places the donation of Constantine
in the moon among the things lost or abused on earth:

153 The cathedral of Constantinople fell under censure for the
excessive number of its clergy and subordinate officers, so that Justinian
reduced it to five hundred and twenty-five, of which probably more than half
were useless. Comp. Iust. Novell. ciii.

158 Even Constantine, however, before the council of Nice, had
declared, that should he himself detect a bishop in the act of adultery, he
would rather throw over him his imperial mantle than bring scandal on the
church by punishing a clergyman.

160 In Psalm. xxv. (vol. iv. 115) and Epist. 213, where he complains
that before and after noon he was beset and distracted by the members of his
church with temporal concerns, though they had promised to leave him
undisturbed five days in the week, to finish some theological labors. Comp.
Neander, iii. 291 sq. (ed. Torrey, ii. 139 sq.).

164 "The rash violence of despotism," says even Gibbon,
"was suspended by the mild interposition of the church; and the lives or
fortunes of the most eminent subjects might be protected by the mediation of
the bishop."

167 Eus. Vit. Const. iv. 18-20. Comp. Sozom. i. 8. In our times
military parades and theatrical exhibitions in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other
European cities are so frequent on no other day as on the Lord's day! In
France, political elections are usually held on the Sabbath!

168 Eus. Vit. Const. l. iv. c. 20. The formulary was prescribed in the
Latin language, as Eusebius says in c. 19. He is speaking of the whole army
(comp. c. 18), and it may presumed that many of the soldiers were heathen.

170 As Chrysostom, at the end of the fourth century and the beginning
of the fifth, often complains that the theatre is better attended than the
church; so down to this day the same is true in almost all the large cities on
the continent of Europe. Only in England and the United States, under the
influence of Calvinism and Puritanism, are the theatres closed on Sunday.

173 Vit. Const. l. iv. c. 26, where the most important laws of
Constantine are recapitulated. Even the heathen Libanius (Basil. ii. p. 146) records
that under Constantine and his sons legislation was much more favorable to the
lower classes: though he accounts for this only by the personal clemency of the
emperors.

175 Comp. de Rhoer, p. 59 sqq. The origin of this increased severity
of penal laws is, at all events, not to be sought in the church; for in the
fourth and fifth centuries she was still rather averse to the death penalty.
Comp. Ambros. Ep. 25 and 26 (al. 51 and 52), and Augustine, Ep. 153 ad
Macedonium.

176 Constitutiones or Leges. If answers to questions, they were called
Rescripta; if spontaneous decrees, Edicta.

177 The Codex Gregorianus and Codex Hermogenianus; so called from the
compilers, two private lawyers. They contained the rescripts and edicts of the
heathen emperors from Hadrian to Constantine, and would facilitate a comparison
of the heathen legislation with the Christian.

178 Tribonianus, a native of Side in Paphlagonia, was an advocate and
a poet, and rose by his talents, and the favor of Justinian, to be quaestor,
consul, and at last magister officiorum. Gibbon compares him, both for his
comprehensive learning and administrative ability and for his enormous avarice
and venality, with Lord Bacon. But in one point these statesmen were very
different: while Bacon was a decided Christian in his convictions, Tribonianus
was accused of pagan proclivities and of atheism. In a popular tumult in
Constantinople the emperor was obliged to dismiss him, but found him
indispensable and soon restored him.

179 The complete Codex Justinianeus, which has long outlasted the conquests of that emperor (as Napoleon's
Code has outlasted his), comprises properly three separate works: (1) The Institutiones, an elementary text book of
jurisprudence, of the year 533. (2) The Digesta or Pandectae
(pavndektai, complete repository), an abstract of the spirit of the
whole Roman jurisprudence, according to the decisions of the most distinguished
jurists of the earlier times, composed in 530-533. (3) The Codex, first
prepared in 528 and 529, but in 534 reconstructed, enlarged, and improved, and
hence called Codex repetitae praelectionis; containing 4,648 ordinances
in 765 titles, in chronological order. To these is added (4) a later Appendix: Novellae
constitutiones(vearai; diatavxei"), or simply Novellae (a
barbarism); that is, 168 decrees of Justinian, subsequently collected from the
1st January, 535, to his death in 565, mostly in Greek, or in both Greek and
Latin. Excepting some of the novels of Justinian, the codex was composed in the
Latin language, which Justinian and Tribonianus understood; but afterward, as
this tongue died out in the East, it was translated into Greek, and sanctioned
in this form by the emperor Phocas in 600. The emperor Basil the Macedonian in
876 caused a Greek abstract (provceiron tw'n
novmwn) to be prepared, which, under the
name of the Basilicae, gradually supplanted the book of Justinian in the
Byzantine empire. The Pandects have narrowly escaped destruction. Most of the
editions and manuscripts of the west (not all, as Gibbon says) are taken from
the Codex Florentinus, which was transcribed in the beginning of the seventh
century at Constantinople, and afterward carried by the vissitudes of war and
trade to Amalfi, to Pisa, and in 1411 to Florence.

180 Called Corpus jurisRomani or C. juris civilis, in distinction from Corpus juris canonici, the Roman Catholic church law,
which is based chiefly on the canons of the ancient councils, as the civil law
is upon the rescripts and edicts of the emperors.

181 On this subject, and on the heathen family life, comp. vol. i. §
91.

187 Gibbon: "The dignity of marriage was restored by the
Christians .... The Christian princes were the first who specified the just
causes of a private divorce; their institutions, from Constantine to Justinian,
appear to fluctuate between the custom of the empire and the wishes of the
church, and the author of the Novels too frequently reforms the jurisprudence
of the Code and the Pandects .... The successor of Justinian yielded to the
prayers of his unhappy subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual
consent."

188 In a law of 326 it is called "facinus atrocissimum, scelus immane." Cod.
Theod. l. ix. tit. 7, 1. 1 sq. And the definition of adultery, too, was now
made broader. According to the old Roman law, the idea of adultery on the part
of the man was limited to illicit intercourse with the married lady of a
freecitizen, and was thought punishable not so much for its own
sake, as for its encroachment on the rights of another husband. Hence Jerome
says, l.c., of the heathen: "Apud illos viris impudicitiae frena laxantur,
et solo stupro et adulterio condemnato passim per lupanaria et ancillulas
libido permittitur; quasi culpam dignitas faciat, non voluntas. Apud nos quod
non licet feminis, aeque non licet viris, et eadem servitus pari conditione
censetur." Yet the law, even under the emperors, still excepted carnal
intercourse with a female slave from adultery. Thus the state here also stopped
short of the church, and does to this day in countries where the institution of
slavery exists.

192 Cod. Theod. iii. 3, 1; Cod. Just. iv. 43, 1; viii. 52, 3. Gibbon
says: "The Roman empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such
murders were included, by Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and
spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had
been inefficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle
influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment."

195 The legal price, which, however, was generally under the market
price, was thus established under Justinian (Cod. l. vi. tit. xliii. l. 3): Ten
pieces of gold for an ordinary male or female slave under ten years; twenty,
for slaves over ten; thirty, for such as understood a trade; fifty, for
notaries and scribes; sixty, for physicians, and midwives. Eunuchs ranged to
seventy pieces.

196 Comp. Hefele: "Conciliengeschichte," ii. p. 620; and
Milman: "Latin Christianity," vol. i. p. 419 (Am. ed.), who infers
from this fact, "that slaves formed the household of the Pope, and that,
by law, they were yet liable to torture. This seems clear from the words of
Ennodius."

200 Gen. ix. 25: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall
he be unto his brethren." But Christ appeared to remove every curse of
sin, and every kind of slavery. The service of God is perfect freedom.

201 1 Cor. vii. 21. The Greek fathers supply, with ma'llon crh'sai, the word douleiva/ (Chrysostom: ma'llon douvleue); whereas nearly all modem interpreters (except De
Wette, Meyer, Ewald, and Alford) follow Calvin and Grotius in supplying ejleuqeriva/. Chrysostom, however, mentions this construction, and
in another place (Serm. iv. in Genes. tom. v. p. 666) seems himself to favor
it. The verb use connects itself more naturally with freedom,
which is a boon and a blessing, than with bondage, which is a state of
privation. Milman, however, goes too far when he asserts (Lat. Christianity,
vol. i. 492): "The abrogation of slavery was not contemplated even as a
remote possibility. A general enfranchisement seems never to have dawned on the
wisest and best of the Christian writers, notwithstanding the greater facility
for manumission, and the sanctity, as it were, assigned to the act by
Constantine, by placing it under the special superintendence of the
clergy." Compare against this statement the views of Chrysostom and
Augustine, in the text.

202 The views of Chrysostom on slavery are presented in his Homilies
on Genesis and on the Epistles of Paul, and are collected by Möhler in his
beautiful article on the Abolition of Slavery (Vermischte Schriften, ii. p. 89
sqq.). Möhler says that since the times of the apostle Paul no one has done a
more valuable service to slaves then St. Chrysostom. But he overrates his
merit.

205 For earlier cases, at the close of the previous period, see vol.
i. § 89, at the end.

206 Acta Sanct. Boll. Jun. tom. v. p. 267. According to Palladius,
Hist. c. 119, St. Melania had, in concert with her husband Pinius, manumitted
as many as eight thousand slaves. Yet it is only the ancient Latin translation
that has this almost incredible number.

214 Comp. Chastel, l.c., p. 293: "It appears, then, as to
charitable institutions, the part of the Christian emperors was much less to
found themselves, than to recognize, to regulate, to guarantee, sometimes also
to enrich with their private gifts, that which the church had founded.
Everywhere the initiative had been taken by religious charity. Public charity
only followed in the distance, and when it attempted to go ahead originally and
alone, it soon found that it had strayed aside, and was constrained to
withdraw."

221 So relates Theodoret: Hist. eccl. l. v. c. 26. For there is no law
of Honorius extant on the subject. Yet after this time there is no mention of a
gladiatorial contest between man and man.

222 In a law of Leo, of the year 469 (in the Cod. Justin. iii. tit.
12, l. 11), besides the scena theatralis and the circense theatrum, also ferarum lacrymosa spectacula are mentioned as
existing. Salvian likewise, in the fifth century (De gubern. Dei, l. vi. p. 51),
censures the delight of his contemporaries in such bloody combats of man with
wild beasts. So late as the end of the seventh century a prohibition from the
Trullan council was called for in the East, In the West, Theodoric appears to
have exchanged the beast fights for military displays, whence proceeded the
later tournaments. Yet these shows have never become entirely extinct, but
remain in the bull fights of Southern Europe, especially in Spain.

223 Thus Augustine, for example, Tract. in JoAnn. xxv. c. 10, laments
that the church filled itself daily with those who sought Jesus not for Jesus,
but for earthly profit. Comp. the similar complaint of Eusebius, Vita Const. l.
iv. c. 54.

224 Ammianus Marcellinus gives the most graphic account of the
extravagant and tasteless luxury of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth
century; which Gibbon has admirably translated and explained in his 31st
chapter.

230 Milman: Hist. of Ancient Christianity, p. 440 (Am. ed.). Comp. the
sketch of the court of Arcadius, which Montfaucon, in a treatise in the last
volume of his Opera Chrys., and Müller: De genio, moribus, et luxu aevi Theodosiani, Copenh.
1798, have drawn, chiefly from the works of Chrysostom.

235 Augustus took the dignity of Pontifex Maximus after the death of
Lepidus, a.u. 742, and
thenceforth that office remained inherent in the imperial, though it was
usually conferred by a decree of the senate. Formerly the pontifex maximus was
elected by the people for life, could take no civil office, must never leave
Italy, touch a corpse, or contract a second marriage; and he dwelt in the old
king's house, the regia. Augustus himself exercised the office despotically
enough, though with great prudence. He nominated and increased at pleasure the
members of the sacerdotal college, chose the vestal virgins, determined the
authority of the vaticinia, purged the Sibylline books of apocryphal
interpolations, continued the reform of the calendar begun by Caesar, and
changed the month Sextius into Augustus in his own honor, as Quintius, the
birth-month of Julius Caesar, had before been rebaptized Julius. Comp. Charles
Merivale: Hist. of the Romans under the Empire, vol. iii. (Lond. 1851), p, 478
sqq. (This work, which stops where Gibbon begins, has been republished in 7
vols. in New York, 1863.)

236 In England and Scotland the term Erastianism is used for
this; but is less general, and not properly applicable at all to the Greek
church. For the man who furnished the word, Thomas Erastus, a learned and able
physician and professor of medicine in Heidelberg (died at Basle in
Switzerland, 1583), was an opponent not only of the independence of the church
toward the state, but also of the church ban and of the presbyterial
constitution and discipline, as advocated by Frederick III., of the Palatinate,
and the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, especially Olevianus, a pupil of
Calvin. He was at last excommunicated for his views by the church council in
Heidelberg.

237 His words, which are to be taken neither in jest and pun (as
Neander supposes), nor as mere compliment to the bishops, but in earnest, run
thus, in Eusebius: Vita Const. l. iv. c. 24: JUmei'"
(the ejpivskopoi addressed) mevn tw'n ei[sw th'" ejkklhsiva", ejgw; de;
tw'n ejkto;" uJpo; qeou' kaqestamevno" ejpivskopo" a{n ei[hn. All depends here on the
intrepretation of the antithesis tw'm ei[sw andtw'n ejkto;" th'" ejkklhsiva". (a) The explanation of Stroth
and others takes the genitive as masculine, oiJ ei[sw
denoting Christians, and oiJ ejktov"heathens; so that Constantine
ascribed to himself only a sort of episcopate in partibus infidelium.
But this contradicts the connection; for Eusebius says immediately after, that
he took a certain religious oversight over all his subjects (tou;" ajrcomevnou" a{panta" ejpeskovpei, etc.), and calls him also
elsewhere a universal bishop " (i. 44). (b) Gieseler's interpretation is
not much better (I. 2. § 92, not. 20, Amer. ed. vol. i. p. 371): that oiJ ejktov" denotes all his subjects, Christian as well as non-Christian,
but only in their civil relations, so far as they are outside the church. This
entirely blunts the antithesis with oiJ ei[sw, and puts into the emperor's
mouth a mere commonplace instead of a new idea; for no one doubted his political
sovereignty. (c) The genitive is rather to be taken as neuter in both cases,
and pragmavtwn to be supplied. This agrees with usage (we find it in
Polybius), and gives a sense which agrees with the view of Eusebius and with
the whole practice of Constantine. There is, however, of course, another
question: What is the proper distinction betweenta; ei[sw and
ta; ejktov" the interna
and externa of the church, or, what is much
the same, between the sacerdotal jusin sacra and the imperial jus circa sacra. This Constantine and his age
certainly could not themselves exactly define, since the whole relation was at
that time as yet new and undeveloped.

239 Justinian states the Byzantine theory thus, in the preface to the
6th Novel: "Maxima quidem in hominibus sunt dona Dei a superna collata
clementia Sacerdotium et Imperium, et illud quidem divinis
ministrans, hoc autem humanis praesidens ac diligentiam exhibens, ex uno
eodemque principio utraque procedentia, humanam exornant vitam." But he
then ascribes to the Imperium the supervision of the Sacerdotium, and
"maximam sollicitudinem circa vera Dei dogmata et circa Sacerdotum
honestatem." Later Greek emperors, on the ground of their anointing, even
claimed a priestly character. Leo the Isaurian, for example, wrote to Pope
Gregory II. in 730: basileu;" kai;
iJereuv" eijmi
(Mansi xii. 976). This, however, was contested even in the East, and the monk
Maximus in 655 answered negatively the question put to him: "Ergo non est
omnis Christianus imperator etiam sacerdos?" At first the emperor's throne
stood side by side with the bishop's in the choir; but Ambrose gave the emperor
a seat next to the choir. Yet, after the ancient custom, which the Concilium
Quinisext., a.d. 692, in its 69th
canon, expressly confirmed, the emperors might enter the choir of the church,
and lay their oblations in person upon the altar—a privilege which was denied
to all the laity, and which implied at least a half-priestly character in the
emperor. Gibbon's statement needs correction accordingly (ch. xx.): "The
monarch, whose spiritual rank is less honorable than that of the meanest
deacon, was seated below the rails of the sanctuary, and confounded with the
rest of the faithful multitude."

244 Cod. Theod. xvi, 1, 2. Baronius (Ann.), and even Godefroy call
this edict which in this case, to be sure, favored the true doctrine, but
involves the absolute despotism of the emperor over faith, an "edictum aureum, pium et salutare."

249 Hence Gibbon, ch. xxvii., charges them, not quite groundlessly,
with inconsistency: "It is with pleasure that we can observe the human
inconsistency of the most illustrious saints and bishops, Ambrose of Milan, and
Martin of Tours, who, on this occasion, asserted the cause of toleration. They
pitied the unhappy men who had been executed at Treves; they refused to hold
communion with their episcopal murderers; and if Martin deviated from that
generous resolution, his motives were laudable, and his repentance was
exemplary. The bishops of Tours and Milan pronounced, without hesitation, the
eternal damnation of heretics; but they were surprised and shocked by the
bloody image of their temporal death, and the honest feelings of nature
resisted the artificial prejudices of theology."

253 The direction: "Compel them to come in," which
has often since been abused in defence of coercive measures against heretics,
must, of course, be interpreted in harmony with the whole spirit of the gospel,
and is only a strong descriptive term in the parable, to signify the fervent
zeal in the conversion of the heathen, such as St. Paul manifested without ever
resorting to physical coercion.